A b-big s-s-sensation: When the Who played 'Tommy' at Holy Cross

Craig S. Semon Telegram & Gazette Staff @CraigSemon

Thursday

Sep 12, 2019 at 3:00 AM

WORCESTER — Fifty years ago next month, the College of the Holy Cross rocked to the Who playing the quintessential rock opera "Tommy" and those lucky enough to catch it are still buzzing from it, a half-century later.

Two months after their triumphant performance at Woodstock, the Who — Roger Daltrey, 25; Pete Townshend, 24; John Entwistle, 24; and Keith Moon, 23 — played Oct. 17, 1969, at the Holy Cross College field house. The concert was a joint venture of the Social Affairs Board of Clark University and the 1843 Club of Holy Cross. Tickets were $3.50 for Holy Cross and Clark University students.

In the fall of 1969, Edward C. Reutemann, president of the 1843 Club of Holy Cross, contacted John Sdoucos at Music Productions in Boston and signed the Who to play in the college’s field house.

“I had a roommate named Steve McDonough and Steve had his ear to the ground a lot better than I did and any of the other guys in the 1843 Club,” Reutemann said. “He (McDonough) said these guys, the Who, they’re a good band but they have this rock opera, 'Tommy,' the first time anybody ever attempted anything like that.”

“I would guess that, probably, the overriding factor was the fact that I was at Woodstock. And, the Who put on nothing short of an amazing show,” McDonough said. “At the time, the Who did three warm-up songs and then they launched into 'Tommy' and they played for two hours straight. The Woodstock show was virtually the same show that the Who brought to Holy Cross. They did an encore. They, kind of, wore everybody out.”

Still rocking, the Who is bringing its “Moving On! Tour” Sept. 13 to Fenway Park. Billed as a symphonic concert tour, the Who opens with a half-dozen selections from “Tommy" and features choice cuts from the band’s two other masterpieces, “Who’s Next” and “Quadrophenia.”

Reutemann said he worked out a contingency contract with the Who, which included a fixed fee of $13,000 (which was already $6,000 more than the 1843 Club ever paid anybody, Reutemann said), plus 50% of the gate after $15,000.

“We ended up paying the Who probably about $17,000,” Reutemann said. “We got a meal-deal and a half on them.”

Kenneth W. Sullivan, the vice president of the 1843 Club of Holy Cross, introduced the Who to an estimated crowd of 4,000 packed in the field house.

“It was just off the cuff," Sullivan said. "I think I said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the 1843 Club of Holy Cross and Clark University proudly present the four craziest guys I’ve ever met, (British accent) The Who.’”

Sullivan used to joke to Reutemann that his legacy shouldn’t be that he signed the Who his senior year but that he turned down the J. Geils Band twice to be the opening act.

“J. Geils Band was going to cost us more money and I didn’t know them that well. I asked, ‘Where are they from?’ And he (Sullivan) said, ‘They’re from Worcester.’ “We got a band from Worcester, Ascension,’” Reutemann said. “And, it was their biggest night ever.”

“Opening for the Who, that was just an amazing evening,” Bliss said. “My ears practically fell off for the next 24 hours. We had seats, basically, in the front row. And the Who had some massive speakers. As I recall, we sounded really good that night. It was an incredible opportunity and it was a ball.”

Ascension had one close encounter with the Who at Holy Cross.

“We were sitting in our dressing room, seven of us, and we heard a knock on the door and in come the Who,” Elliott recalled. “They come in. They looked at us and all they said was (adopting a London accent), 'Pardon me mates, got any uppers.' We just looked at them. We didn’t even say anything. And they turned on their heels and they walked out. And that was the total interaction between the two bands that night.”

The seven-piece band made $400 for opening for the Who and “probably blew it all at the Miss Worcester Diner after the concert,” Elliott said.

Reutemann, Sullivan and Lawrence B. Breitborde, chairman of the Social Affairs Board at Clark University, also have stories of their offbeat encounters with the Who.

“I walked into the dressing room, and Roger Daltrey’s drinking a milkshake-size cup of scotch with no ice. He’s not woofing it down. He’s just drinking it. And Keith (Moon) was there with him. And I said to them, ‘What do you think of Worcester, Massachusetts?’ And they looked at each other and smiled and they go, ‘Where are we?’” Reutemann said. “And, I said, ‘We’re looking forward to a great concert.’ And it really was. Whether the Who remember it or not, for us, it was a great concert.”

“One of the Who, I think it was Keith Moon, was doing this Chuck Berry-type dance across the floor as they were waiting to go on and he was doing a duck bill thing with his mouth,” Sullivan said. “They were a little goofy. They might have been a little drugged up. I’m not sure. But they put on a hell of a show.”

“I remember Keith Moon sitting there, twirling his drumsticks, and just kind of looking at me. I figured, I’ll stay a safe distance and everything would be OK, and it was,” Brietborde said. “They weren’t looking to make any lifelong friends.”

For the Who show, the 1843 Club rented a P.A. system from audio pioneers Bill and Terry Hanley at Hanley Sound Inc. in Medford.

“We put money in the sound production. When we were setting all that up, around 4 o’clock this truck rolls up, these mop-headed guys get out and we said, ‘Who are you?’ And they said, ‘We’re the Who.’ It was their road team and they brought their own sound system with them and they just kind of piled one speaker on top of another,” Sullivan recalled. “The janitor was a really nice guy, an Irish man named Tommy. Tommy was sweating bullets all night. He didn’t think we had enough electricity to handle all the speakers.”

“So the Who brought 50 'Voice of the Theatre' speakers and we had 50 'Voice of the Theatre' speakers. However, we couldn’t use our speakers because the Who demanded using theirs,” Reutemann explained. “Well, our sound people and their sound people used the same electrical hookup. And, somewhere in the middle of the concert, somebody flipped the switch and both speaker systems were on with 100 'Voice of the Theater' speakers. It noticeably changed the sound and they left it on. And the percussion was actually making my trousers move. And I was way in the back. It was louder than loud. It was loud music. It was pure rock music.”

As editor of photography for The Crusader and the Purple Patcher (Holy Cross College’s newspaper and yearbook, respectively), Donald J. Reardon was one of three Holy Cross students (Michael McGann and Matt Byrne were the other two) shooting photos of the Who’s performance.

“I was surprised how well Keith Moon could keep a beat and still be able to reach down with one hand and grab a can of whatever liquid he was consuming,” Reardon said. “Those were the days.”

The four shots published (one in The Crusader and three in the Purple Patcher) all feature a bare-chested, buff Daltrey wearing the same buckskin suede get-up with leather fringe that he wore at Woodstock.

Bill Kelly, who was a disc-jockey at the college radio station WCHC and is now a regular disc-jockey on “Little Steven’s Underground Garage" on Siruis XM Radio, was six rows from the stage, directly in the middle, when the Who played at Holy Cross.

“During the performance, Daltrey was swinging the mic so far over the audience that everyone was impressed every time he caught it. If I remember correctly, that was always,” Kelly said. “Moon was tossing drum sticks blindly into the air and catching most of them, barely missing a beat. When he missed, there was a box of drumsticks at his left hand on the floor.”

McDonough was amazed by the Who’s seemingly “boundless energy.”

“Roger Daltrey, his microphone was heavily taped to the chord because of all of his antics he pulled on it. He’d swing his microphone around like a rodeo lasso. He’d throw it up in the air. He’d be dancing around with the mic stand,” McDonough said. “Townshend playing his guitar like it’s a (expletive) windmill. You could see bleeding knuckles after the show, pretty much. It was pretty intense.”

Brietborde said the Who performance was such an unbelievable event that made you keep pinching yourself and asking, "Am I really here witnessing this.”

“I recall it as something where I was excited from the first note to the last note,” Breitborde said. “Roger was doing his twirling and Townshend was doing his windmills and his little jumps. I remember it as much visually as I remember it in terms of sound … The only calm presence onstage was the bass player (Entwistle). He was off to the side.”

Sullivan said he thinks everybody there were “absolutely entranced.”

“First of all, we didn’t know if the Who would be doing 'Tommy,' the whole thing. And they did,” Sullivan said. “And everybody was as happy as a pig in slop and sat there and just soaked it in because it was just a phenomenal show. The Who just captivated the audience. Everybody sat there and was mesmerized.”

Fifty years later, those who were there (and those who were instrumental in getting the Who there) are still talking ‘bout the concert for their g-g-g-generation.

“The 1843 Club was basically a group of BMOCs (Big Man on Campus). And, back then, they tended to be conservative, not out-of-the-box thinkers,” McDonough said. “So Ed (Reutemann) was a little bit out of the mold and, funny thing, he listened to me.”

“We did a survey last year, getting ready for our 50th reunion, which is next year,” Reutemann said. “They were asking, ‘What is the thing you remember most about your senior year?’ And, I think, the number one thing was the Who concert. And the number two thing is that we had to cancel our football season because the football players caught hepatitis.”

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